A Sunday guest post by my brilliant husband, Gregg.

Every Sunday, my clever husband offers me a “day of rest” by taking over the homemaker duties here. His primary topic, the Biblical Truth of Creation vs. Darwinism, is a subject that has broad reaching scientific, social, and metaphysical implications and is gaining more and more attention in our modern culture. For believers and non-believers alike, the primary purpose is to present scientific, historical, logical, and/or sociological data in an empirical and defensible fashion, as much as possible written in layman’s terms, and in a format suitable for supplementing any homeschool curriculum whether you choose to believe the Biblical account — or secular guesses — about the origins of human life on earth.

Glad you Missed Me

I had to take a brief sabbatical upon my return home. With the new year, I resolve to make my regular Sunday appearances more frequently.

Question #1. How did life — with specifications for hundreds of proteins — originate just by random interactions of chemicals without intelligent design?

Paul Davies

Darwinist Professor Paul Davies admitted, “Nobody knows how a mixture of lifeless chemicals spontaneously organized themselves into the first living cell.”

Professor Andrew Knoll, of the biology department at Harvard, admitted said, “we don’t really know how life originated on this planet.”

These are stunningly honest remarks from men who believe with religious zeal that life somehow DID occur by accident with no intelligent intervention.

A minimal living single cellular organism requires nearly a thousand proteins. Even if every atom in the universe were an experiment with all the correct amino acids present for every possible molecular vibration in the supposed evolutionary age of the universe, not even one average-sized functional protein would form. So how did life — with hundreds or thousands of proteins — originate just by chemistry without intelligent design?

“At present, science has no satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of life on the earth. Perhaps the appearance of life on the earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited; either life was created on the earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in nonliving matter lying on the surface of the planet. The first theory places the question of the origin of life beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having any concrete evidence at all to support that belief.”
Robert Jastrow (b. 1925) PhD Theoretical Physics, recipient of NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, exerpted from Until the Sun Dies (1977) pp. 62-63

Andrew Knoll

For more than half a century, experiments along the lines of the failed Miller-Urey experiment have lauded man’s ability to generate “the building blocks of life” from base chemicals in simulated “primordeal” atmosphere. The truth is very, very different from the claim.

First of all, it is important to know that absolutely no evidence, geological or otherwise, has ever been found anywhere on earth for the alleged primordial soup. None. It is an imaginary, if necessary construct. A prop.

Given that background, understand that free oxygen is scrupulously excluded from such experiments as Miller-Urey and all analogs. Oxygen instantly “oxidizes” organic compounds, but oxygen is required to form base elemental compounds (such as water and ozone) and oxygen forms the ozone layer which shields the earth from harmful radiation. Oxygen would naturally be produced by photodissociation of water vapor (evaporation caused by heat) and ionized oxygen would naturally form ozone.

So, if there were no oxygen, there could be no ozone, therefore ultraviolet rays would destroy any biochemicals that might accidentally form in the alleged primordial soup. Also, adenine can be seen as fairly important since it is one of the four molecules that makes up DNA and RNA. The hydrogen cyanide polymerization that leads to adenine can only occur in the presence of oxygen. Without oxygen, only cytosine, guanine, and thymine can possibly form. Yet every living thing contains all four as the basis of their genetic code.

Urey-Miller Experiment

Side Note: Some Darwinists claim that without A, just C, T, and G would be sufficient for a theoretical “RNA World” to exist, and that ribosomes would co-opt adenine when it became available. Even if that claim were true, the fact is that ribose and cytosine are also hard to form, and are very unstable once formed.

By Darwinist’s own estimated timeline (to which I do not personally subscribe), oxidized minerals such as hematite are found as early as 3.8 billion years old according to geologic columner dating, which is nearly as old as the earliest rocks, and (again, by their own estimates) 300 million older than the earliest known life. In summary, leaving out oxygen invalidates these experiments entirely.

Furthermore, there is now almost universal agreement among specialists that the earth’s primordial atmosphere contained neither methane, ammonia, nor hydrogen — collectively called ‘reducing’ gases. Rather, most scientists now believe it contained carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Miller-Urey “sparking” experiments and all analogs will not work with those gases in the absence of reducing gases.

Understand that energy is generally destructive. Adding energy to any thing doesn’t “organize” that thing. Genreally, it transforms it into disorder. For example, adding fire to a Christmas tree doesn’t organize the Christmas tree — or the house in which it resides. Keeping the nature of energy in mind, understand that all energy sources which can produce amino acids actually destroy them much more efficiently.

Miller–Urey used strategically designed and placed “traps” (never found in nature, by the way) to isolate any biochemicals as soon as they were formed so that electric sparks or UV didn’t destroy them. Without these traps, even the miniscule amounts of biochemicals obtained, which actually amounted to tars and toxins, would not have been able to remain intact for more than a few seconds. Think logically. Even billions of years cannot lend aid to Darwinian theory when biochemicals are destroyed faster than they can possibly form.

Biochemicals always react with each other and with inorganic chemicals. Sugars (and other carbonyl (>C=O) compounds) react destructively with amino acids (and other amino (–NH2) compounds), yet both must be present for a living cell to form.

Three-D Proteins

Along with tars, Urey-Miller resulted in formaldehyde and other toxins. Without enzymes from a living cell, chemical reactions such as formaldehyde (HCHO) reactions with hydrogen cyanide (HCN) are necessary for the formation of DNA and RNA bases, condensing agents, and other elements critical to life. But HCHO and especially HCN are deadly poisons. Both formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide destroy vital proteins and thus terminate life. This could be why hydrogen cyanide was used in Nazi gas chambers.

Abundant Ca2+ ions would precipitate fatty acids (necessary for cell membranes) and phosphate (necessary for such vital compounds as DNA, RNA, ATP, etc.). Metal ions readily form complexes with amino acids, hindering them from more important reactions.

In fact, polymerisation requires bifunctional molecules (can combine with two others), and is stopped dead in its tracks by a small fraction of unifunctional molecules (can combine with only one other, thus blocking one end of the growing chain). Miller type experiments produce five times more unifunctional molecules than bifunctional molecules.

Life requires homochiral polymers (all the same ‘handedness’) — proteins have only ‘left-handed’ amino acids, while DNA and RNA have only ‘right-handed’ sugars. A small fraction of wrong handed molecules terminates RNA replication, shortens polypeptides, and ruins enzymes. Urey-Miller and analogs only ever produce racemic mixtures, or equal mixtures of left and right handed molecules. This is known as the Chirality Problem and it is never realistically addressed by Darwinists. The problem is side-stepped with such answers as “maybe it hasn’t always been that way” and the like.

In the wake of the utter failure of these types of experiments to explain how life — with specifications for hundreds of proteins — might have originated just by chance without intelligent intervention, a host of new religious beliefs popped up that have little or nothing to do with science and amount to fantastical “just so” stories.

The Truth

The truth is that the only valid explanation that is consistent with science, logic, and revealed knowledge is the creation account described in the book of Genesis in the Holy Bible, referred to in the 10 commandments, and by God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ.

Many choose to think and view the world in the starkly conflicted ways that Darwinism as a philosophy, within the context of a dogma of methodological naturalism, require. I choose to believe the teachings of the most qualified and accredited individual to ever walk this earth, Jesus Christ the Son of God. The Creator, the Logos, an authentic teacher, instant healer of disease and disability, raiser of the dead, calmer of the seas. He was the greatest non-conformer to the dominant ideas of this world and paid for it with His life.

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